Misidentification: How The #Antifafires Rumor Caught On Like Wildfire

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Erin Gallagher
@3r1nG
During the 2020 Oregon wildfires, rumors spread locally and nationally that left wing activists were responsible. My new case study for the Media Manipulation Casebook sorts through the chaos of #AntifaFires 🔥
Antifa Fires
Misidentification: How The #Antifafires Rumor Caught On Like Wildfire
During the Oregon wildfires of September 2020, rumors spread locally and nationally that left wing activists had intentionally set the fires based on a series of misidentifications and inference by...
mediamanipulation.org
6:30 PM · Apr 20, 2021

https://mediamanipulation.org/case-studies/misidentification-how-antifafires-rumor-caught-wildfire

Overview

During the Oregon wildfires of September 2020, rumors spread locally and nationally that left wing activists were responsible. The evidence for so-called “antifa” involvement was based on a series of misidentifications and inference by public officials. The rumor received additional amplification from partisan influencers on the far right, fake antifa Twitter accounts, anonymous trolling communities on 4chan, the QAnon conspiracy network, and late stage attention from President Trump.

STAGE 1: Manipulation Campaign Planning & Origins

On the evening of Sept 6, 2020, 15 leftist protesters were arrested in Portland in connection with the burning of a mattress outside a police precinct.1 The following evening, Sept. 7, The Holiday Farm wildfire broke out, one of many during Oregon’s 2020 fire season.2 The next day rumors that antifascist street protestors (an activist group popularly known as antifa) had started the wildfire began to circulate during the breaking news event. Based on our analysis, the rumor that antifa activists were responsible for starting this wildfire likely developed organically and was traded up the chain through trolls and partisan influencers into more mainstream local press and right-wing news ecosystems. Although there is no clear evidence of a central operator driving the campaign to purposefully muddy the waters and conflate these concurrent events, the amplification of these rumors nonetheless created confusion.

STAGE 2: Seeding Campaign Across Social Platforms and Web

The antifa arsonist rumors spread first as speculation on right-wing social media and small websites, where speculation and disinformation about the decentralized protest group are common topics. These sites included partisans on 4chan, the QAnon conspiracy community on 8kun, right wing blogs, and early amplification from far right media.

4chan’s “Politically Incorrect” board (/pol/) was an early site of seeding antifa arsonist rumors. On Sept. 8 a commenter posted, “My guess is Antifa has switched to starting forest fires.”3 About two hours later another comment blamed the Proud Boys: “this fire was one hundred percent started by proud boys.”4 More individuals on the far-right board continued to blame antifa, writing statements such as, “As far as I know, Antifa started some of these fires, after BTFO out of Salem last night,”5 “They've been camping by Detroit lake, and that area has massive fires.”6 “Antifa is burning down everything”7 and “I wouldn't be surprised if Antifa is lighting fires.”8

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